Notes on: White Agitation For An Aboriginal State In Australia (1925-1929)
Kevin Blackburn
Australian Journal of Politics & History
Volume 45,Issue 2,pages 157–179,June 1999
Article first published online: 18 DEC 2002
DOI:10.1111/1467-8497.00060
Abstract:This article evaluates proposals in the late 1920s for the creation of an Aboriginal State in either a part of the Northern Territory or South Australia. In the proposals for an Aboriginal State, Aborigines were to own their own land, live according to their own customs, govern themselves, and have Aboriginal Members of Parliament representing them in the Federal Parliament. The study analyses the intellectual foundations of the proposals in the political organisations of the Maori of New Zealand. It examines Aboriginal people’s ambivalence to the idea, which arose out of their bitter experience of living through previous plans made supposedly for their benefit by white society.
Refusal of governments to recognise Aboriginal groupings as ‘nations’. [Especially after so many ‘national’ eggs had already been broken and scrambled]. Only brought to the forefront in the 90s: Mansell’s Provisional Government, and calls for recognition of sovereignty in 1992, etc. Reynolds has also explored the issues.
The sovereignty issue has never been raised before, or considered seriously.
[158] Also what do Aboriginal people think of the issue, or of self-government ?
Paul Coe (1979) asserted that the Australian state had illegally usurped Aboriginal sovereignty. [Of course it had: the question is what can be done about it.]
‘The High Court refused to recognise that any sovereignty existed in Australia outside that exercised by the Crown.’ [Of course it would: that is how it is constituted.]
Reynolds claims a contradiction: i.e. ‘The High Court after Mabo upholds on the one hand the idea that Aboriginal people did have title to their land before white settlement, while on the other hand maintaining that they did not exercise sovereignty over that land.’ [So ? If Mr Blackburn owned land, would he have sovereignty over it ? Land rights and sovereignty are two different issues.]
[159] Since the 1980s, the Australian govt pressured by international organisations: limited recognition of rights to municipal or regional government. ATSIC, 1990.
Very recent campaigns for a separate state and for recognition of sovereignty.
[160] 1925: Aborigines’ Protection League, Adelaide.
Proposed ‘as a replacement for the reserve system’. An extreme form of ‘protection’?
‘ “Protection”, according to its proponents, entailed segregation the Aboriginal population from the whites in [161] order to “protect” them from the harmful effects of the coming into contact with white “civilisation”. [especially young women ?]
[161] Usually meant little more than institutionalised domination and confinement of Aborigines, supervised by white superintendents.
‘In contrast to’ this, the State movement. Contrast or an extreme form of ‘protection’ ? [Assumption of a spaceless Aboriginal culture and placeless rites, able to be practiced anywhere.]
State movement was thereby a recognition of sovereignty [?].
[162] Manifesto: an area handed back, people to be allowed to practice most customs, except cannibalism etc. [? So much for self-determination.] Nobody to be forced to go there.
Farms to be given to Aborigines, in Arnhem Land, people trained in rural occupations [working for whom?]
[163] ‘Segregation was a feature of the Aboriginal State, as it was under the Aborigines Protection acts.’ The constitution of the State to ‘prohibit, under a severe penalty, any persons, other than aborigines, except Federal Government officials and duly authorised [by whom?] missionaries, teachers, and agricultural instructors from entering this State.’
Founding President of the League, Herbert Basedow, Country Party MP for Barossa, former Chief Protector in NT after 1911.
: He had advocated having the territory of several Aboriginal tribes declared as reserves, on which Aborigines were kept on their own land and allowed to [164] follow their traditional lifestyle.’
Other members had worked as missionaries at Elcho and Goulburn Islands. Other missionaries, etc.: Jennison, Margaret Matthews, Blacket, Nicholson, Seymour, Stevens, C. Eaton Taplin, James Lamb, Constance Ternent-Cooke.
Never consulted the Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land. But the people there already considered themselves sovereign [so why would they have considered forming a State and sending representatives to Canberra, an act of submission to the sovereignty of the Australian parliament ?]
[What evidence is there that the APL considered Aboriginal sovereignty for a moment ?!]
1931, Arnhem Land gazetted as an ‘unsupervised’ reserve.
[165] ‘… the lack of white interest in the region … ‘
Resistance to outside control, ‘reminiscent of some of the Maori successes … ‘
APL claimed to have taken some ideas from Maori separateness [Maori were literate, bi-lingual, already Christian of their own devising, agriculturalists, with schools, towns, modern commercial systems, strong hierarchies and leadership models, etc.] [And still lost out.]
[166-7] Maori model. Not working too well by the 1920s.
[168] [Confusion between sovereignty, autonomy, representation and self-determination ? ]
APL a breakaway group from the AFA, which, ‘under the influence of Baptist Reverent J.H. Sexton, who was honorary secretary from 1911 for thirty-one years, adopted a strongly paternalistic attitude to Aborigines, which assumed that they were a child-like people who were incapable of looking after themselves.’ Sexton: ‘Aborigines need a straightout system of direct rule’. His views dominated the AFA.
[169] Colonel Genders [retired accountant] elected to exec. comm. of AFA in Feb. 1924. No evidence that he had experience with Aborigines: his paper, founded 1919, supported small farmers, fostered missionary work, argued for prohibition, encouraged Esperanto. An accountant and actuary, head of JP Association of SA.
Genders visited Pt McLeay in 1924, and deplored the conditions there.
[170] Proposed 29.1.25 ‘that a petition be presented to the Federal pParliament praying for the creation of a separate state in Northern Australia to be called the Australian Black State, the Australian Zion State, or some other appropriate name, citizenship in which to be restricted to Australian natives who are full blood blacks, half-castes, quadroons, or octoroons.’ Discussion deferred. Genders resigned.
AFA rejected (see above).
[171] Petition circulated, i.e. of whites acting ‘on behalf of’ blacks. Other petitions to most State Parliaments envisaged.
[172] Enthusiastic support from The Advertiser, the journal of the Adelaide establishment. Opposed by The Argus, the journal of the Melbourne establishment and landed gentry. One supported the possibility of separate representation, the other opposed the notion of self-government: Racists at cross-purposes ?
No mention of equal rights for those who would not be included.
[173] Neville fervently opposed. Cook, CPA in the NT, supported inviolability aspects: only for the ‘unspoilt natives’, i.e. ‘myalls’, ‘those in their natural state’, etc. [So who would represent them in Federal Parliament ? Unaipon ? Where did Cooper and Ferguson stand on this ? ]
[174] Cook .. illustrated that the Aboriginal State could gain some grudging recognition from advocates of protectionist policies.’ [!]
The petition presented to Parliament by W.L. Parsons, Nationalist Member for Angas. Also support from Norman Makin, Labour member for Hindmarsh. [to remove all Aboriginal people from competing with his white rural workers?]
[Breathtakingly naive.]
See also, in State Records: SRG 139/ 1 / 65
Letter from Sexton, Sec.: AFA, to Sir Thos Glasgow, Melbourne,
See also, as introduction to topic:
Differentiating indigenous citizenship: Seeking multiplicity in rights, identity, and sovereignty in Canada
- CAROLE BLACKBURN
Article first published online: 24 FEB 2009
DOI:10.1111/j.1548-1425.2008.01103.x
American Ethnologist
Volume 36,Issue 1,pages 66–78,February 2009
Searching for Guarantees in the Midst of Uncertainty: Negotiating Aboriginal Rights and Title in British Columbia [available in pdf form]
- CAROLE BLACKBURN
Article first published online: 18 APR 2008
DOI:10.1525/aa.2005.107.4.586
American Anthropologist
Volume 107,Issue 4,pages 586–596,December 20
Kevin Blackburn: Mapping Aboriginal nations: the ‘nation’ concept of
late nineteenth century anthropologists in Australia
131-158
[in pdf] Aboriginal History
Volume 26 2002
The Onus of Proof ofAboriginalTitle, Kent McNeil [also in pdf form]
Osgoode Hall Law School - York University, 1999
Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Vol. 37, pp. 775-803, 1999